The power of words

During the workshop we wrote a multilingual poem. First, we all brought poems from our own countries that dealt with the topics identity, belonging or minorities, and we presented them to one another. Afterwards, we decided to write one ourselves to sum up the ideas we had about the power and meaning of language.

Each "poet" wrote in her own language and just translated the last sentence, so the next person knew a bit about the stanza before. But nobody was allowed to read the rest of what the others had written or to ask for the content. In the end, we translated our own words into English, and surprisingly – it made sense!

The power of words: Original version

Listen to our recording of the original version of the poem:

{audio}/UserFiles/File/ABOUT_US/WORKSHOPS/Poem%20native.mp3{/audio}

Photo: copyright E&M

The original text of the poem: we folded the paper so that each person only saw the final line of the stanza which had been written before theirs.